Stuck in traffic? Watch for heart attacks from fumes, stress

William Atkins
Sunday, 15 March 2009 19:22

Science - Health

According to expanded research by German researchers, having to contend with heavy traffic and traffic jams increases your risk of having a heart attack within an hour of being subjected to such traffic conditions. The blame comes from the noxious fumes and maybe the stress, too.


According to the WebMD article “Traffic Triples Hearth Attack Risk,” drivers have increased risk from heart attack and even their passengers are at higher risk from heart attacks.

In fact, Dr. Annette Peters and her associates at the Institute of Epidemiology (Helmholtz Center, in Munich, Germany), stated that heavy traffic causes your risk of a heart attack within one hour to increase by over three times its average rate.

Dr. Peters announced her conclusions at the 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention of the American Heart Association (AHA) at Palm Harbor, Florida.

The researchers also found that a small but significant increase in risk also occurred up to six hours after people were exposed to heavy traffic.

The cause of this triple-times risk of heart attack is from the noxious fumes that come out of the exhaust system (which includes the tailpipes) of our cars. When traffic jams and heavy traffic occurs, many more cars are situated very close to each other.

The major pollutants that are emitted from our cars’ exhaust systems are:

Hydrocarbons (unburned or partially burned fuel),

Nitrogen oxides (the reaction of nitrogen and oxygen),

Carbon monoxide (which is produced when combustion doesn’t burn everything off),

Carbon dioxide (emissions of the molecule that is a major greenhouse gas of the environment),

Particulates (tiny particles emitted by the exhaust system), and

Sulfur oxide (oxides of sulfur based on oil).

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